Life In The Fast Lane Seems So Slow
by The Red X
Summary: A short oneshot story about a single day in the life of Kid Flash... Inform your therapist.


Saturday, 5:52 AM.

John McQuincy was a typical farmer with a typical farm in the dusty wasteland known as Middle America. He stepped outside of his home, which had been built by his father before him, and looked at the sun slowly rising over the horizon.

He saw a narrow cloud of dust approach him, a dust trail that seemed to converge to a tip at the very front of it. And as the cloud of dust and dirt neared closer to his home and property, he chuckled to himself.

In the next second the fast moving object had begun to slow down and had bounded over his fence. A forth of a second later it was skidding to a stop across a grass field that was John Mc Quincy's front yard. A whole half a second after that, the blur came to a sudden stop on his doorstop.

"Milk delivery!", Kid Flash announced while the cloud of dust caught up to him, with a happy smile on his face. In his hands he held a basket filled with old fashioned, glass bottles of milk.

"Hey! I really appreciate this.", John said. He was lanky farmer, with dirty complexion and a mustache on his face. He was a man who sweated and earned his place on this Earth, who worked for his share of bread at the family table. "Ever since our cow, Delilah, took ill, she just hasn't been much good for milking."

"Aww, sorry to hear.", Kid Flash said as he took idle steps up to the man's doorstep to hand him the basket of milk bottles.

The farmer took the basket and held it in his arms happily. "Tell Gary I said thanks for lending me some of his cow's milk. And it's a real shame to hear about his truck."

"Yeah…", Kid Flash said as he rubbed the back of his head. "I kinda felt bad that it got wrecked in that fight I had with The Crop Duster last week. So I kinda offered to make a few runs for him.", he said with a chuckle.

"Well I'm glad to hear it. I was worried this might not come, for a while.", John said while patting the basket. "I have a family to feed, ya know."

"Well, give 'em all my best. Betsy too. But I gotta run. Take care!" Suddenly Kid Flash vanished into a yellow and red blur that rocketed off to the horizon.

"IT'S DELILAH! NOT BETSY!", The farmer yelled after him. Then he chuckled to himself and went inside with the milk for breakfast.

Kid Flash idly jogged at 217 miles per hour across the wide-open land of Kansas. He reached up to his mouth and yawned, then that hand patted his stomach as it growled. "Man, I'm hungry. Better go get some breakfast."

The speedster continued his trek back to Central City with a vigor pace, but slowed down once he passed a sign that said:

_WELCOME TO CENTRAL CITY._

_HOME OF KID FLASH._

Kid Flash slowed down to a speed walk at 50 miles per hour as he stepped onto a highway at the edge of his hometown. He passed by a few cars, many of which honked their horns and a few rolled down their windows to wave. Kid Flash did his best to wave back and smile without looking away from where he was running.

"Kid Flash!", a boy's voice called out past the wind rushing by the speedster's ears.

Kid Flash turned to his left and saw a little boy in the backseat of a car, dressed in a homemade costume just like his. The real Kid Flash gasped and laughed so hard he almost stumbled, but quickly righted his misstep.

"You like my costume? It's just like yours!", the little boy exclaimed. The little boy's face was hidden behind a hand-sewed mask and blonde hair waved in the wind from his head. "My grandma made it because I'm your biggest fan!", the child exclaimed, as if loosing all sense of composure in the presence of his idle.

Kid Flash smiled and reached over to quickly ruffle the boy's bright blonde hair. "Looks great, kiddo. Maybe one day I'll expect to see ya running with me."

The boy's eyes lit up and he beamed.

Kid Flash found himself smiling proudly back. "Well, I gotta run. I'm sure I gotta save the day somewhere! Bye!", he accelerated and began to pass the car.

"Bye! Bye!", the boy said as he waved out the car. His mother and older brother, in the front seat of the car, warned the child not to fall out the window.

Far ahead, Kid Flash said to himself, "Man, am I hungry. There's gotta be a place I can eat around here…" He began looking around past the other cars on the highway. "Ooo! An all-you-can-buffet!" He immediately got off the highway at the soonest safe moment, and rocketed towards a local hotel he spotted.

6:07 AM

He was a short and lanky fellow. He dressed in a dark grey overcoat and hunched in a way as to conceal all his features from anyone who might look at his downcast eyes. His unkempt hair was a light shade of grey, even though he didn't seem old enough to have white hair yet. In his hands, he carefully clutched a silver pocket watch. A pocket watch with seemingly mystical markings and symbols engraved on to the cover.

"Soon… Kid Flash… Soon I will have my revenge for all that you've done to me and my family…", the short and hunched man said as he walked down the street in the early morning.

6:08 AM

When he reached the hotel's morning reception room, the doors busted open and he took a moment to savor the smell of the foods laid out at the breakfast buffet. Warm baked rolls and biscuits, buttery toast, greasy bacon, hot sausages, breakfast burritos, chilled milk and an entourage of various cereals, waffles, pancakes, five kinds of syrup, and sandwiches.

Kid Flash began to drool and salivate at the sent. Suddenly the red and yellow blur ran past the entire selection of food, taking with it a plate, some silver wear, and as much as could be fit on the plate. Then the red and yellow speedster quickly took a seat an empty table and began to devour enough breakfast to feed five army men.

By now, everyone had just realized what the red and yellow blur was, spotted Kid Flash at his table, and in some manner or another greeted him.

Kid Flash swallowed and withdrew this breakfast burrito long enough to wave and smile, before he began to eat again with the hunger to match a piranha.

Kid Flash would travel to the buffet table two more times before offering to pay the hotel manager, but the kind manager said it was on the house. Kid Flash thanked him, waved goodbye, and sped off again.

7:02 AM.

Kid Flash was having a harder time then usual reaching his cruising speed of somewhere between 80 and 100 miles per hour, no doubt due to the massive amount of food he ingested. He knew he should slow down and digest his food before he started running too much, but his next destination was only a meager 7 miles away.

Mrs. Everson was an aging old lady with an old fence. The fence had once been a brilliant shade of white, but after many years it had been reduced to a dimmer shade of white with several chips of the old paint peeling off.

Kid Flash arrived at her drive way at 7:03 AM and knocked on her door.

Mrs. Everson, who decades ago had developed the habit of rising early from her late husband, answered the door with a smile. "Kid Flash! Good to see you.", she said. She wasn't so old and decrepit that smiling and walking were laborious tasks, and she readily hugged the boy with a healthy grip.

But Kid Flash knew to paint a fence would be just a tad too laborious for her, and was happy to hug her back. "Glad to see you too, Mrs. Everson. How's the arthritis?"

She broke the embrace and laughed once. "A pain."

Kid Flash half-smiled charmingly. "Mind poring me a glass of that nice iced tea of yours while I go get the paint?"

"Certainly.", she said.

"Great. Can't wait. Be back in a flash!", he said before he vanished into a red and yellow blur and was gone before Mrs. Everson could blink.

At a local hardware store, Kid Flash was once again well welcomed by Nick, a young collage student. Nick quickly readied Kid Flash the buckets of paint and collected the various brushes and supplies he'd need.

When Kid Flash asked him how much he owed for the paint and supplies, Nick reported that his manager said it was on the house if Kid Flash would be so kind as to recommend the store.

"With service like this, who couldn't?", Kid Flash said as he gathered the supplies in his arms and let the buckets of paint hang by their handles from his arms.

"Uh, you need any help with those, dude?", Nick offered.

"Nah. I've carried heavier. Take care."

"See ya, man!"

And Kid Flash was gone again.

7:26 AM

Kid Flash had finished laying down the first coat of brilliant white paint on the fence. It had only taken him two minuets to carefully paint the first coat, and he gratefully gulped down a second glass of sweet iced tea after Mrs. Everson handed it to him.

With a gasp after he set down the empty glass, Kid Flash said, "Should take a while for that first coat to paint. I'm gonna go run off and make sure no one else needs me, but I'll be back in time for the second coat.", he said with a comforting tone and smile.

Mrs. Everson said that was just fine, thanked him again, and sent him off for a while.

Kid Flash, having digested most of his breakfast by now, ran to the tippy top of a skyscraper in downtown Central City and peered over the city he guarded. With no obvious signs of trouble, such as explosions or giant robots or those evil clouds that one time, he assumed all was fine for the most part.

He stopped by a bookstore to do some speed-reading. He began re-reading Homer's _Odyssey_ for the third time, but after 4 minutes and 218 pages, an issue of _TV Guide_ with a picture of Archie in a frog-suit on the cover distracted him.

He painted another coat on Mrs. Everson's fence, then ran past a local park just in time to wave at little kids on the playground and tell Jimmy to quit kicking sand in Mary's eyes.

After playing with some kids and a third coat of paint to Mrs. Everson's fence, Kid Flash returned home to his Flash HQ.

Flash HQ, as he'd came to call it, was actually an abandoned building in the middle of a long-ago forgotten part of Central City's old industrial district. Kid Flash had often worried that this small area of town, which was owned by the city, and his headquarters with it, might be demolished someday to make way for future urban development. But so far that had not happened and his headquarter was left undetected.

The outside of the small building was carefully allowed to decay as if it really was abandoned and forgotten. But inside, Kid Flash had occupied much time in renovating the building into a very comfortable command center for his quest to better his city and his world.

The walls were painted a shade of blue. The living room featured a couch, a big screen TV donated by Shade's Electronics after being saved from the villainous Wheel Man, and several tables and chairs against the walls. On these tables were the various projects and concerns to Kid Flash. Everything from shopping lists, to newspapers, to homework was neatly cluttered on the tables. A computer and some video equipment occupied one table near the kitchen.

Upstairs were a bedroom for Kid Flash to stay in and a guest bedroom. The kitchen was surprisingly not very well stocked, since whatever food that entered Kid Flash's headquarters didn't last very long before being consumed by the speedster.

Kid Flash went to the computer and answered email, both from his personal and professional life. He laughed at a e-card HotSpot had sent him. Kid Flash actually wasn't a big user of computers. "Too slow", he regarded all but the fastest models. Even though he could type nearly a thousand words a minuet, he could easily hand-write a letter on paper twice as fast as a computer took to send off that email. Assuming the paper didn't burst into flames or smoke while he wrote, that is.

Next he lounged on his comfortable couch and watched a movie he read about in the _TV Guide_ back at the bookstore.

10:42 AM

That short and hunched man, still clad in his dirty grey overcoat, walked the streets like a leper. He still clutched his hands around his pocket watch, and muttered ideas of revenge as he searched for Kid Flash.

12:32 PM

A few hours later, when the movie was over, Kid Flash felt a little hungry and left his Flash HQ in search of something to eat. He considered a vender in the park selling burgers and hot dogs, but decided to eat at a local diner instead.

He chatted to two ladies roughly his age, if not a year or so older, at the diner's bar while he ordered and then ate three double cheeseburgers.

"…and Dr. Platypus thought he had me beat. But I escaped, and ya know why?", Kid Flash said to the two ladies.

"What?", one asked, on the edge of her seat in admiration of Kid Flash. Her friend was less then impressed and leaned against the diner's bar on her elbows.

"Because I'm the fastest man alive!", Kid Flash said with a deep smirk.

The impressed girl beamed in admiration, while her friend rolled her eyes.

_Oh well, one outta two isn't bad_, Kid Flash thought of it.

Suddenly Kid Flash heard sirens and spun around in his bar stool to stare out the diner's window. Two C.C.P.D. cars were chasing a blue car down the street, with sirens blaring and shinning in shades of blue and red.

"Oh man…", he said as he turned back to the girls. "Looks like I got to go save the day again."

"Awww!!!", the impressed girl whined. "Whatever will we do without you..?", the unimpressed one said drolly.

"Clide!", Kid Flash called out to the head cook of the diner. "I gotta run, put the food on my tab, will ya? Theirs too while you're at it!", he said, pointing to the two girl's plates.

"Sure thing, Flashy!", said the fat cook with a heavy New York accent. "Go get 'em!"

Kid Flash suddenly appeared between the two girls, with an arm on each shoulder, and said, "It's been great girls, but I gotta go. Later!" Then he ran out the door in a flash of red and yellow and down the street after the police cars.

The two girls watched as the blur that was Kid Flash disappeared down the street in a blink of an eye.

"Wow…", the unimpressed one said with wide eyes.

"And you didn't want to give him our phone numbers…", the originally impressed one lamented.

It was afternoon now when Kid Flash left the diner in pursuit of the car the police were chasing. When he reached it, three and a half seconds later, and the first thing he did was knock on the window of the driver. The second thing he did was dodging a bullet that shot through the window.

"Okay… Don't wanna play nice, huh?" Kid Flash zoomed off to the side, grabbed a steak knife out of the kitchen of a local restaurant, and placed the knife in front of the moving car's rear driver-side tire. The steak knife was nearly bent out of shape and ruined, but it did it's job sufficiently to puncture and slash open the tire.

Kid Flash slowed down and fell back near the cars long enough for the blue car they were chasing to eventually slow down and head right for a bus stop. Thinking quickly and moving quicker, Kid Flash accelerated to a sprint and saved an old man who sat on the bus stop before the car could crash into it.

By the time the young, and shirtless, man driving the car emerged from the crashed car of his, he already had his pistol in hand and pointed at the officers.

The officers of the two cars crotched behind their open doors and pointed their pistols between the wedge of the car and the door's frames, as standard procedure.

"BACK OFF! I MEAN IT!", said the shirtless man who was driving in the now crashed car. "BACK OFF, PORKIES, OR ELSE!", he screamed as his gun's aimed from jumped from police officer to police officer.

Suddenly a red and yellow blur passed in front of him in the blink of an eye. And then the man noticed that a large banana had replaced the pistol in his hand.

"What the…?", he asked nobody in particular as he stared at the banana.

The blur circled around him, grabbed him with red hands, zipped over to a near by tree, and darted off in another direction.

Leaving the man hanging from a tree branch by his underwear.

"All yours!", Kid Flash informed the police officers as he skidded to a stop near one of them, and then took off again.

2:26 PM

The short and hunched man with the watch slowly walked towards two other of Central City's finest. "Can one of you… Direct me to Kid Flash? So that I can finally extract my revenge!!!"

The two police officers looked at each other.

"Better frisk this freak too.", one said to the other.

The other officer sighed deeply, and put on a pair of rubber gloves.

"Uh…", said the short and hunched man.

3:36 PM

Kid Flash passed by some cheerleaders who were washing cars for a fundraiser. Then he skidded to as stop and zipped back to them. "Hey, ladies. Making everything shiny and pretty?", he asked.

One blonde girl with a sponge in her hand gasped. "Ohmygodit'sKidFlash! LookLindait'sKidFlashOhmygod!!!", the blonde girl said almost too quickly for anyone to understand.

Kid Flash was quiet for a moment, and then he zipped over and put his arm around her. "Now this girl I can understand."

4:52 PM

After promoting a local blood drive at Central Memorial Hospital, Kid Flash began his patrol of the city again. He knew well that bank robberies in his city were most common between the hours of 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM, when most banks were gathering their money and placing them into their vaults.

At the Central City Police Department, Maggie the dispatcher was hard at work coordinating Central City's finest.

"Hey, Maggie. Got a minuet?", Kid Flash asked.

"Oh! Didn't hear you come in, red.", Maggie, a somewhat overweight woman, turned around in her seat.

Kid Flash was leaning on the doorway, holding a box of cream filled doughnuts. "Sorry, bout that. Got ya a present.", he said as he handed her the box.

"Awww, you're a dear, red.", she said as she took the box.

Kid Flash zipped over to behind her shoulder, looking at her computer station. "Anything going on?"

"Mmmmm… Not yet, hon. But stick around and chat for a moment. If anything happens, we'll be the first to know.", she said, displaying a smile that was the closest Maggie ever came to a smirk. She handed him a doughnut and they began to idly chat.

5:23 PM

When the report of the second bank robbery this month came in, Maggie and Kid Flash were indeed the first to know about it. And Kid Flash was long gone by the time Maggie could even utter a word.

In a few blinks of the eye later, Kid Flash crashed through the glass doors and stood in the middle of a bank.

A man with long hair and slightly dilated pupils held an E-11 taser rifle to the head of a woman he had clutched in his hand, a hostage.

"Okay. Just take it easy, buddy.", Kid Flash said with slightly raised hands.

"Drop it, man! You got a blaster on you? Drop it now!"

"Blaster? I don't even have any pockets on this costume!", Kid Flash said as he pulled away the fabric on his thighs, as if to illustrate the lack of pockets. "It's okay. Why don't you let the nice lady go and we can talk about this?"

"No way! If anything happens to me, her brains are on the wall!"

The woman in his arms whimpered to herself.

"Okay, how about you let her go and take me as a hostage instead? Come on, I'd make a great hostage. Everyone likes me.", Kid Flash suggested.

The desperate man with the taser rifle considered it for a moment.

"So why are you robbing this bank anyway? You look like the kinda guy who needs the money more then he wants it.", Kid Flash said in a soft tone.

"You wouldn't understand, you got that? You'd never imagine what I've been through!"

"Try me.", Kid Flash said.

27 minuets later…

The woman had been long ago released, and now Kid Flash and the bank robber sat on the bank's counter top. The bank robber was sobbing and telling his life story to Kid Flash, who nodded and patted him on the back the whole time.

The sun had set by the time the man peacefully surrendered to the police, on the condition that he could call his mother.

6:24 PM

Kid Flash inserted a kindly given quarter into a payphone and dialed a number.

Someone by the name of Blacksmith picked up on the other end. "Hello?", the dominant sounding woman asked.

"Hey, cold, dark, and mean. It's your favorite pest here, Kid Flash. Just thought I'd let you know that I picked up a guy with an E-11 taser rifle. It's unregistered, and if the cops trace it back to The Network in any way, I'm gonna come over to your office and give you an atomic wedgie, woman or not."

The woman, known as Blacksmith, curled his lips in a faint feeling of disgust. She was the leader of a secret black market for supervillains known as The Network. She had enough of a headache fighting off Ross Malverk, another crime lord who was constantly gunning for her job, and she did not enjoy what Kid Flash had to say.

"Why… Kid Flash, I assure you I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm as legitimate a business woman as Lex Luthor or Bruce Wayne are business men."

"Yeah… I'm sure, lady." Kid Flash hung up the phone, and ran off again.

6:26 PM

Flight 054 was running on time and as scheduled. It was a simple and small commercial cargo plane, transporting overnight packages. It was an old plane with two miniature twin engines, one under each wing.

Whether the events that were about to occur were accidental or maliciously planned made no difference. It was something police and FBI would sort out for themselves.

Whether it was an honest misfortune or part of some plot… A red warning light started blinking in the cockpit, along with a ringing alarm.

6:27 PM

Kid Flash was still a bit worked up over the conversation he had with Blacksmith, and felt it necessary to blow off some steam by sprinting around the city at 409 miles per hour.

In only a blink of an eye, Kid Flash passed by screaming people, but only heard their cries for a fraction of a second. Most people might not have even noticed the short sound just before it passed far far behind them. But Kid Flash was a person who could listen to the 1812th overture in roughly 2.4 seconds and still bop his head to the beat.

As the screams passed by him, he snapped to attention and skidded to a stop as quickly as he could, then zipped back to the mass of panicked citizens. "What's wrong?!", he asked promptly as whiff of hot ash fault rose into the air behind him.

No one noticed him, but they didn't need to for Kid Flash to see what was wrong.

A plane was hurtling towards the city, rapidly losing altitude, and the engine under its left wing was ablaze.

Kid Flash's eyes widened, his lips tightened to a point. "AGH!!!", he yelped and then- BAM, he was gone in a flash.

The red and yellow blur, that had become so familiar to the citizens of Central City, blazed down the street at speeds that even Kid Flash would consider fast. He left behind an unusually powerful rush of wind and the smell of hot rubber and ash fault.

Kid Flash ran down a long street, heading strait towards the tall skyscraper, and gaining more speed as he ran. Just before he could go splat against the side of the skyscraper, he jumped up and began running _vertically_ up the length of the tall building, like a space shuttle during liftoff.

One second later, close to the top floor, Kid Flash made a tremendous bound, powered by the massive momentum he built up.

He was in mid air now, and easily sixties or seventies stories high. He rotated his wrists and arms around like propellers as he steered his way to the falling air plane.

"Yeah! I'm coming- Wait! How do I land- UMPH!!!", Kid Flash said as he went splat against the windshield of the air plane.

The windshield, tested to be able to withstand mid air collisions with birds, cracked from the force of Kid Flash's impact.

Kid Flash, despite dizzying eyes, grinned at the shocked pilots and gave them a thumbs up with his hand pressed against the glass. Then the wind smeared him off towards the planes left side like a bug on the windshield of a car.

"Agh! Engine!" Kid Flash held out his limbs just in time to catch himself before falling into the jet engines massive turbine blades. He took a moment to examine it from where he was, the engine's turbines were barely spinning and smoke pored out from the engine's exhaust.

Kid Flash adjusted his grips on the engine's front edge, and was able to release and free his right arm. He was surprised he wasn't being sucked in, yet, but that was probably because the engine had no power. The only spinning of the turbine was force of wind.

First step, put out the fire. Kid Flash circled his arm in front of the turbine to blow wind into it, hoping to smother the fire. That didn't work and the fire instantly grew. So he held his arm out behind him and rotated it around the other way, attempting to suck the air out of the engine and suffocate the fire, but that made flames leap out of the engine and lick Kid Flash's costume.

"Ack! Hot!", he stopped rotating his arm and the fire retreated into the engine beyond the turbine blades. He looked behind him and saw that the pilots were attempting to glide towards a large river that separated Central and Keystone city. Smart move on the pilots part. But Kid Flash worried the plane didn't have enough power to make it to the river before crashing into the ground in a hellish fireball.

"Oh man. Oh man. Come on… Come on, Kid Flash… Think! Think faster!" Suddenly his eyes grew wide and he smirked. He stared at the turbine blades of the engine. "Faster…"

He trusted his right hand into the engine's mouth and grabbed one blade of the turbine propeller, and pushed it around on its circular track. Faster. Faster… Faster! His arm and the turbine quickly grew into a blur.

Inside the cockpit, the co-pilot shouted, "What the-! We have power in the left engine!!!"

"WHAT?!", the pilot yelled.

Outside, Kid Flash's arm was a barely visible translucent blur of yellow as it spun around faster and faster, spinning the turbine blade with it. "Ha HA! Yeah!", he shouted triumphantly as he turned the turbine faster and faster.

Kid Flash smelt a trace of ozone like scent in the air just as a few stray bolts of electricity sparked around the path of his rotating arm. A strange phenomenon Kid Flash couldn't explain and only happened when he approached his top speeds.

He thought nothing of it as he concentrated on once concept. Faster. A concept he was extremely familiar with.

"Pull up!", the co-pilot in the cockpit yelled as yanked the control yoke further back.

"What do you think I'm doing?!", the pilot shouted back as he pulled back on his control yoke too.

The plane began to pull up and lost altitude less rapidly as it sped towards the ground. Then to the river's shore. Then to the middle of the wide river's body of water.

Kid Flash did it! He gave the plane enough trust to pull up and make a splashdown in the river.

Now if only he could get off the plane before being sliced into pieces by that turbine he had powered.

He braced himself and leaned more to his left. "Well, here goes nothing!" He let go and whipped his right arm back fast enough to yank his whole body away from the engine's mouth!

He lost his grip and fell between the engine and the main fuselage of the plane.

_Splash!_ Kid Flash's yellow and red form hit the water like a meteor from worlds unknown.

_SPLASH!!!_ The plane skidded along the river's surface, leaving behind a wake that could be seen for miles.

Soon the plane's emergency balloons and floats engaged and the crew of the plane began evacuating on rafts before the plane had even begun to gently rock like a boat.

Kid Flash shot out from the water, propelled by swimming like a supersonic dolphin, and screamed, "Whoot! I did it!", before his streamline body splashed back into the water.

8:55 PM

After Kid Flash swam the crew of the plane to shore, kicking his feet in the water to propel the rafts as fast as they would go without tipping, the media soon arrived. It amazed Kid Flash how the media traveled in this city almost as fast as he did.

What had happened after that was the usual media sensation, police investigation, plane clothed detectives questioning hand in hand with uniformed troopers.

Kid Flash sat in the back of an ambulance, a blanket draped around his shoulders. He related his end of the story to the hoard of reporters that had gathered around him, minus the part where he tried to suck the fire out of the engine and almost burned off his eyebrows.

Kid Flash secretly reveled in the attention and admiration. True, he honestly cared about helping people, but the love and admiration was more then a sufficient reward for a service he would have done for free.

"Hey, uh, what time is it, anyway?", he asked a reporter.

One reporter lady looked at her watch and said, "Five till nine."

"Five till nine?", he repeated in shocked dismay. He quickly stepped out of the back of the ambulance and threw off the blanket around his shoulders. "Man, I gotta be somewhere. I'm gonna be late!"

"But-", one reported began.

"Sorry, dude. Promise is a promise.", he said as he zigged and zagged quickly through the crowd of reporters. "And I made a promise." He emerged from the crowd just in time to bump into the short and hunched man in the overcoat. "Oof. Oh, sorry, buddy."

"At last!", the short and hunched man said. "I finally found you!" He looked a bit worse and unkempt after a particularly disturbing frisk earlier. "I finally found you!", he said almost in a sob of joy.

"Uh… You looking for an autograph? Cause I'm kinda in a rush and I'd be glad to-"

"No! Don't you dare move! I've been looking for you this whole day just so I could take my revenge!"

"Your what?"

"My home… Mine, and my whole family's, home was wrecked because of you, in a fight you had with The Blue Beetle. We had to live with relatives in Chicago…", he said with a cringe.

"Was that the first or the second Blue Beetle?", Kid Flash asked, braking the man's dramatic rant.

"I think it was the first.", he said calmly and practically. "The one who tried to ram you with a giant horn on his head?"

"Oh. Yeah that was the first Blue Beetle. The second one rolled into a ball and tried to run me over."

"Yes, yes…" Then the short and hunched man with pale skin and hair began his ranting tone anew. "And in that climatic battle, the apartment building we lived in was demolished! My life's been one never ending nightmare after another ever since!"

"Well… Hey, I'm sorry to hear about that. There wasn't a whole lot I could do though. Anything I can do the help now?"

"You can stand still while I use this!" The man held up the silver pocket watch he'd been clutching all day.

"Okay… While you do that, I'm gonna go find one of the nice paramedics to talk to you. Alright?", Kid Flash said.

"This watch is the Mystic Watch of the Seventh Triad! It has the mystical powers to turn anything I please into sold gold!" The man began to laugh. "Imagine… You, _Kid Flash_, stuck in time forever in an unmoving block of gold!"

Kid Flash sighed and hunched his head somewhat. "Wouldn't you rather just sit down and have something to eat? My treat."

"NO! NOW, you will pay!!!" He pressed the stud that released the spring-loaded cover of the mystic watch. The cover swung open and…

Fell off.

The cover fell strait off the watch. Followed by the hands of the watch's face, then the face itself fell. Several gears and springs popped out of the watch after that.

"Agh!", the short and hunched man yelped as he drew back the casing of the watch and examined it. "What? How could this happen?", he shouted to it.

"Yeah… Well, good luck with that. I gotta go." He patted him on the shoulder in the friendliest manor possible. "Bye!", he said before zipping away.

The short and hunched man stared at his watch, completely speechless. Words chocked and failed in his throat.

Then two very nice police officers grabbed him and cuffed him. The pieces of the watch were swept up into a pan and placed in evidence.

9:01 PM

Kid Flash skidded to a stop in the middle of the room at Central Memorial Hospital. "Sorry I'm late! Hope I didn't miss your bedtime." He looked at the clock.

The children instantly turned around in pleasant shock and screamed in delight.

"You made it!", said a nurse who was watching over the children. "We saw what happened on the news with the plane and wasn't sure you'd make it."

The children, Kid Flash, and the nurse, were all gathered in a room of the Hospital's daycare. The children, nearly a dozen sick youngsters, all snuggled their sleeping bags while in their pajamas.

"I'm real sorry about that. I know their bedtime was nine. Ya think it's not to late for that bedtime story I promised?"

The children all simultaneously pleaded and begged.

The nurse chuckled and bent down slightly to try and calm the children with pats on the head and shoulders. "Okay! Okay, it wont be a problem, I'm sure."

The children screamed in delight so loudly that it could be heard from down the hall.

"Alright!", Kid Flash yelled over their cheers. His voice, heroic and beautiful to them, silenced them with a hushed sense of ah.

Children were beautiful creatures.

"Now… Who's read for that bedtime story I promised?"

Half the kids yelled "ME!", in reply. The other half grabbed his hands and led him over to a wooden chair where he was to sit and receipt to them a story.

"Okay okay…" He said, trying to stifle a warm smile while they seated him in the chair. "Now what was it you wanted to hear? That red book with the cat on the cover?"

"No!", said one very adorable girl with a broken finger. "Tell us how you saved the plane!"

"Yeah!", sever kids agreed with her.

"Okay… Okay. If you're sure it's the plane story you wanna hear."

"We do!", another child said.

"Okay. Plane story it is." Kid Flash's eyes perked up as he noticed a single lone boy in the corner of the room who was too shy to say a word. "Just one moment."

He zipped off to that corner, grabbed the kid, and zipped back to the chair and held the surprised boy in his lap. "Okay, now I'm ready.", he said with a warm smile.

The children all sat down on the soft padded floor and began to listen.

"So… There I was running through the city…", he began.

9:45 PM

Kid Flash had finished with the children, put them to bed, and began his nightly patrol.

He stopped two more muggings and a carjacking. Slow night.

11:02 PM

Kid Flash stepped into his Flash HQ, genuinely tired. It has been one of the busiest Saturdays he'd had in a long time.

He searched his sparsely populated fridge and withdrew the only item, a microwaveable roast beef. He put it in the microwave.

11:55 PM

Kid Flash had eaten and now stepped out of the bathroom after taking a steamy shower. He wore old-fashioned pajamas, complete with a sleeping cap.

Kid Flash kept a bedroom for himself in this headquarters and often slept there, and he opened the door to the room and stepped inside.

He put his hand over his mouth as he yawned to himself.

He looked over at a poster of his beloved uncle. "G'night.", he said to the poster.

Then he crawled under the covers of his bed and snuggled his pillow.

He yawned once more before his eyes had closed shut.

12:01 AM

Kid Flash was asleep.

He slept with a smile. And he slept very, very soundly.

………………………………………………………………………………...

Author's Note: I suppose you could consider this Kid Flash's test run (pun intended) in my writings. You can expect to see a lot more of him in the very soon to come, _Twice A Thief_.

I hope you enjoyed.

Written for and in honor of my friend.


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